“All set?” he asked politely as she reentered the living room.
“Yes.”
As he opened the door for her, he held out his hand. Her hairpins were lying in his palm. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His complacent smile spoke volumes.
“I thought you’d be driving the patrol car,” Sunny remarked once they were under way.
“I’m off tonight. George is in charge of the office unless there’s an emergency.”
“Would you mind rolling the windows up?”
“Yes. I like the wind.”
Sunny didn’t doubt that. It was doing him a big favor by keeping her blouse plastered to the front of her body. The shape of her breasts was detailed for him in profile every time he turned his head to look at her, which was frequently.
She lapsed into stony silence. If he wouldn’t think her a coward, she would demand that he take her home. As it was, she was resigned to spending several hours in verbal skirmishes. Those she could handle adroitly. What she wasn’t sure she could withstand was his assault on her senses.
He made something sexual of shifting the car’s gears. His powerful muscles moved with unconscious precision, contracting and relaxing with hypnotic suppleness. The car responded to him like a well-tamed animal. A mere flick of his wrist, a fluid motion of his leg, and it performed.
“The drive-in is on the other side of town,” Sunny said, tearing her eyes away from his lap as he downshifted.
“We’ve got to stop at my place first.”
“What for?”
His smile would have embarrassed a tomcat. “I never go to the drive-in unprepared.”
She stared at him with dismay, then disgust, before turning her head away. She kept her gaze steadfastly on the windshield until they pulled into the driveway of a small but well-kept house on a tree-shaded street. It wasn’t the kind of place she expected him to live in.
It was a family neighborhood. Children were playing on the wide lawns. Several boys on bicycles waved to Ty as they rode past. Two women were chatting over a row of dwarf crepe myrtles in full bloom. The man across the street was mowing his St. Augustine grass.
Ty came around and opened her door. “Come on in.”
“I’ll wait here.”
“Have you got something to hide?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Myself.”
“Staying hunkered down in the car will only increase their curiosity.”
He was right. By now most of his neighbors had noticed that their sheriff wasn’t alone. They paused in their various pastimes to stare unabashedly. Sunny shoved open the car door. Declining to take the hand Ty offered to assist her, she alighted by herself. She also shook off the hand he placed on her elbow to help her as they took the wide brick steps up to the porch, where he swung open the front door of his house.
The living room was bright and airy. Sunny had expected something dim and iniquitous. It wasn’t spotless, but it was neat, as though clutter had been shoved off the modern furniture in expectation of her visit. His dust rag hadn’t been as thorough as it could have been. His plants needed watering.
But it was a pleasant room that looked well lived in and hospitable, a room where books were read as often as the television was watched. Sunny would have felt comfortable stepping out of her shoes as she crossed the hardwood floors. The room inspired that kind of hominess.
“This is nice.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Want to see the bedroom?”
“No.”
“Designer sheets. I changed them today.”